Supreme Court of Nevada

Supreme Court of Nevada
Supreme Court of Nevada, Carson City, Nevada
Established	1864
Country	Nevada, United States
Location	Carson City, Nevada
Composition method	Election
Authorized by	Nevada State Constitution
Decisions are appealed to	Supreme Court of the United States
Judge term length	6 years
Number of positions	7
Website	Official Website
Chief Justice
Currently	Ron D. Parraguirre
Since	January 4, 2016
Jurist term ends	2017

The Supreme Court of Nevada is the highest court of the U.S. state of Nevada. It is the highest judicial body of the Nevada judicial system.

There are seven Justices of the court, who are elected to six-year terms in officially nonpartisan elections and who are not subject to term limits, which were rejected by voters in 1996. The Governor appoints Justices in the case of a vacancy. The most senior justice becomes Chief Justice for a two-year term.

The main constitutional function of the Supreme Court is to review appeals from the decisions of the district courts. The Supreme Court does not pursue fact-finding by conducting trials, but rather determines whether legal errors were committed in the rendering of the lower court's decision. The court can affirm, modify, or set aside the decision on appeal. The court must consider all cases filed.

When Nevada established its statehood in 1864, three justices were elected to the Supreme Court for a term of six years. This was increased to five justices in 1967, and to seven justices in 1997.

Despite experiencing a spectacular population boom in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, Nevada was unable for many years to establish an intermediate appellate court, like the vast majority of U.S. states. Attempts to create one all failed at the ballot box in 1972, 1980, 1992, and 2010. The result was extraordinarily severe congestion at the appellate level, as all appeals must be processed through the state supreme court. The alternative would be to have no right to appeal, since the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that appeal is not a constitutional right, which has always been and is still the case today in Virginia in civil and criminal cases, and until the early 2000s was also the case in New Hampshire and West Virginia (until both of those states recognized that denying such a right was unjust and barbaric). Nevada, however, has guaranteed its residents a right to appeal since statehood, resulting in the present crisis. From the 1980s to the present, Nevada state supreme court justices have been burdened with the highest per-justice caseloads of any state supreme court in the United States.